Slow-Cooked Goat Tacos

One of my favorite cooking magazines is Gourmet Magazine. I have often used their recipes, either in pure form, or as a basis for my own adventures in cooking. When looking through the July 2008 issue, I came across a great looking goat taco recipe using anchos and guajillos – two of my favorite chilis. I didn’t think much of it at the time, largely because goat is not that common. However, as luck would have it, the next day I was at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market and visiting my friends at Eco-Friendly Foods as I do every week. Lo and behold, they had goat! And not just any goat, but fresh (!) goat shanks and goat shoulders. So I picked up a goat shoulder in preparation for some delicious goat tacos. In a kismet moment, there were also tomatillos at another vendor, and I have been growing jalapenos in the garden, perfect for making some fresh salsa verde! It had been a long time since I had made some really traditional Mexican food, my favorite Mexican cookbook being Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen. I used his recipe to make some delicious salsa verde for topping the goat tacos.

The recipe from Gourmet was an excellent blend of spices, utilizing the depth of the anchos and guajillos, as well as the slight gaminess of the goat. The estimated cooking time of 5 hours was not far off, but first braising the goat in the sauce on the bone, then shredding the meat and braising again allowed the flavors in the sauce to penetrate the meat fully, creating a deep, slow, burning spice in the meat. The taste was authentic and rich, a flavor I had not experienced in years, indeed, not since I was in Mexico.

Served with the accompaniments of shredded lettuce, salsa verde, avocados, sliced onions, lime juice, crumbled cheese, and a few chilis, it was a delicious balance of hot, sweet, tangy, rich, and tart that was a pleasure to eat. Surprisingly, a Falanghina was quite the lovely match for the combination – not too dry and not too sweet, but a nice balance to the spice and depth of the tacos.

Sometimes It's Just Better Not to Post

Ok, so I was all ready to post about this great pasta dish I made with roasted tomato sauce with pesto and grilled beef. Yeah…that wasn’t going to happen. It was a total disaster. The best I can say about it was that the pasta was cooked properly al dente.

I guess in some ways it is helpful to have disasters, because otherwise how are we ever going to learn from our mistakes?

So this is what I have learned: never over-cook your pasta sauce…elsewise it turns into tomato paste, and no amount of attempts at saving it will succeed…that is unless you have a whole new pile of tomatoes, basil, garlic, and about an extra hour to cook.

I hate cooking disasters. It is especially frustrating when you spend more than an hour trying to make something delicious. Oh well, I made up for it with a very nice martini at least, and maybe next time it will turn out better…

Barbequing in Connecticut

Is there anything more Americana than barbequing on Fourth of July weekend? How about ribs in the Connecticut suburbs on a deck surrounded by trees and hearing fireworks in the distance? Well, it appears that this Fourth of July was the most Americana of times I’ve had in a long time.

It is intriguing to consider how much effort most of us will go through to experience the perfect barbecue. A significant quantity of books have been written on the subject, and it is a multi-million dollar industry. Products on the market range from the food, to the utensils, to the paraphernalia (i.e., aprons, hats, corn-on-the-cob holders, etc.), and $1,000+ grills.

This Fourth of July weekend, we relaxed with friends and grilled on their brand new gas Weber grille. But first, we made an early run to a highly unique store, which has apparently been featured on Ripley’s Believe It…Or Not! Called Stew Leonard's, it was kitchy in the extreme, involving animated animals, barnyard songs, and an entire dairy-bottling operation, backed up by live video pictures of their dairy herd. There we picked up two racks of pork ribs, several ears of bi-color corn, and some cherries.

For once I was not the one cooking up a storm. Our friends marinated the ribs in Penzey’s BBQ 3000 rub, then slow-baked them at 250-degrees Fahrenheit for 6 hours. They cooked up a homemade honey barbeque sauce with a little bourbon (Bulleit Bourbon to be specific), then threw the ribs on the grille for another 30 minutes, glazing with the sauce and turning them four or five times. At the same time, the corn was cooking in its husks for a while, before being peeled and thrown directly on the grille. The result was a beautiful spread for the four of us. Yes…we did eat ½ a rack of ribs a person…but how could you not when they look like this:

The ribs were so tender that they fell off the bone, and some of the bones were even disintegrating, while the outside of the ribs were sticky and happily crusty. A little BBQ Sauce on the side, and a 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, and it was a perfect evening with friends.

Spain at Home

I have always loved gazpacho. It is the perfect example of “summer in a bowl,” and perfectly lovely on a warm night. I found some great cucumbers, and had a bunch of tomatoes that were too soft to slice, so I thought I would finally try and make this wonderful little cold soup. I can’t take credit for the recipe, as I found it on Food and Wine’s website, based on Chef Jose Andres’ wife’s recipe. Going into it, I had no idea how easy it was, else I would have been making it for years. Ingredients are simply tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet bell peppers, garlic, vinegar, olive oil, and a little salt. Pureed in a blender, chilled for a couple of hours, and it’s ready. I served it up with garnishes of the basic ingredients and a couple pieces of toast.


For dinner last night I served the gazpacho, then simply broiled with lemon a whole red snapper marinated in fennel fronds and olive oil, filleted the fish, and served it with a few marinated beans I bought at Whole Foods.


A light Spanish-inspired meal for a summer evening. Next step: buy a good Spanish cookbook so I can make more of the delicious, simple food that is Spanish cuisine.

Mmmmm.....Italian.....

Very often the best food is the simplest. You can spend hours cooking complicated crazy food, and in the end it is just that....complicated. Sometimes I find that the best way to have a really great meal is to take simple ingredients and throw them together with whatever I happen to have in the fridge. The best part is, in these days of pesticides, hidden ingredients, and weird preservatives, the more you can do from scratch the better it is for your health.

Recently, my husband has started teaching himself to bake bread from scratch. Now I may be able to cook, but baking bread is not something I enjoy...mainly because I love to play with my food. A fringe benefit to this new motivation to bake (other than the wonderful smell that pervades the house), is that I have fresh bread to use in dinners. Last week it went into the stuffing for the poussin, and this week it was used in a little bruschetta.


The chicken and zucchini were simply broiled with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The sauce for the chicken was olive oil, lemon, parsley, garlic, mustard, and honey. Add a little balsamic vinegar to the zucchini, and serve with Doug's pain complet topped with tomatoes, shallots, parsley, and olive oil. All in all a easy, tasty, dinner in which I attempted to pay homage to the simplicity of Italian cuisine.

(mea culpa: this Italian meal was paired with a white Portuguese table wine...but its citrus and honey notes paired perfectly with the garlic and lemon flavors of the meal.)

Stuffed Poussin

Every Sunday morning, we make a point of heading down to the Dupont Circle farmer's market. This is not one of those farmer's markets where you also have importers or non-locals. It is exclusively local farmers (and one fisherman and his wife). Over the four years we've lived in this area, we've been fortunate to get to know some of the vendors, and have our regular stops at specific times of year.

This weekend the greens are coming out in a big way, from frissee to mustard greens and kale, as well as beautiful spring garlic and French breakfast radishes. We had an entire Whole Foods cloth bag filled with only green things. However, this weekend I made a bee-line for our friends at Eco-Friendly Foods. I knew from experience that right about now they should start having some fresh poultry, and boy was I right! They had lovely fresh poussins, as well as our favorite fresh-made rabbit sausage.

I decided to cook the poussins last night, and was rewarded when I stuffed them with milk-soaked bread, fresh sage, mushrooms (shitake and baby bella), and ricotta salata, baking them surrounded by more mushrooms and pancetta.


Accompanied by the 2004 Revelation Red, and a salad of fresh spring greens, it was a taste of spring but warm and toasty to go with our unseasonably cold day (it was a high of just under 50-degrees, and normally it should be about 60-degrees!).

My First True French Sauce

It was a pretty dreary cold day, and I had these incredible lamb chops. Acquired from the local organic butcher, they started as a rack, and were beautifully frenched by the staff into 6 chops. Sometimes you obtain these wonderful ingredients and you just know you need to make something fantastic to justify the quality.

So I dove in with my first attempt at a traditional French sauce, a jus lie (defined in the New Professional Chef as "a thickened sauce made from stock...[can be] used as a replacement for the classic grand sauce, demi-glace"). Yes, I could have made a demi-glace, but I thought I should start small. The sauce went well, for a first attempt.

I used my newly created jus lie to make a secondary garlic sauce for my simply broiled lamb chops. The secondary sauce, involving wine, tomato concasse, and garlic cloves poached multiple times, turned out really well, and was the right color and texture. I count my first traditional French sauce a resounding success.


Paired with some simple salted boiled potatoes and the amazing, luscious, 2001 Nicolis Amarone della Valpolicella, I never wanted to leave the table.